Simon Brett - The Stabbing in the Stables

The stables did constitute a rather unusual crime scene. In most cases, after a murder the police seal off the relevant area, move all the people out and strictly control who is allowed back in. Horses present a different problem. There is a limit to the time they can be kept locked up in their stalls, but nothing is likelier to destroy a crime scene than having a large number of horses trampling over it. As a result, the police had to work fast on their forensic investigations.

Then, before the normal business of the stables could continue, owners were encouraged, if possible, to find alternative short-term accommodation for their horses. In Sonia Dalrymple’s case, this was not a problem. Her substantial home, Unwins, had its own stabling, which had accommodated Chieftain and the children’s pony Conker for some years. But the departure of Sonia’s twin daughters to boarding school and the increasing amount of travel undertaken by her and her husband Nicky had led to putting the horses into Long Bamber Stables. Returning them to their home stabling until the police investigations were complete was the obvious solution. And also meant that Jude’s visit of potential healing to Chieftain could be easily rescheduled.

She fixed to go to the Dalrymples’ house at three-thirty on the Friday afternoon and that morning invited Carole to Woodside Cottage for a cup of coffee.

“Can I give you a lift to Sonia’s?”

“Bless you, but it’s no distance. I can walk. I need the exercise.”

Carole’s tightening mouth showed her disappointment. She didn’t want to be excluded from any part of the potential investigation. Jude could feel her unease, and also sensed that there was something else troubling her neighbour. There was a secret Carole wanted to confide. Knowing better than to prompt, Jude waited for the revelation to be made naturally.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Oh, yes?”

“It concerns Walter Fleet’s murder.”

“Mm?”

“Well…”

Jude looked evenly at her friend, a smile playing round the edges of her lips.

“You know, after you’d found the body…”

Jude nodded.

“…you went off to the Fleets’ house…”

Another nod.

“…and I stayed by the body…”

“Yes. Because, as you had pointed out to me, it would have been very irresponsible for either of us to do any investigation of the crime scene.”

“Mm.” There was a long, awkward silence. “Well, I’m afraid I did.”

“Did what?”

“A little investigation of the crime scene.”

“Oh, Carole, brilliant!”

“I know I shouldn’t have done but-”

“Never mind that. What did you find out? Did you go into the tack room or whatever it was?”

Carole nodded, her shame now giving way to excitement. “Yes. And I reckon it was a tack room. Full of bridles and halters and bits of leather and rope and what-have-you. But there was a second level too. Not quite a second floor, but one half of the space was boarded over, and there was a wooden ladder leading up to it.”

“Did you go up the ladder, Carole?”

This time the nod was defiantly proud. “There was a little lamp switched on. A sleeping bag, a few other oddments. It looked as though someone had been camping out up there.”

“Any sign that whoever-it-was had been there recently?”

“The sleeping bag was half unzipped and crumpled. Looked as if someone had just leapt out of it.”

“I suppose you didn’t feel as to whether it was still warm?”

“As a matter of fact I did, Jude. Hard to tell, though. The night was cold, any warmth would have dissipated pretty quickly.”

“Hm…I wonder who’d been up there.”

“Well, unlikely to have been Walter Fleet, given the fact that his house was right next door.”

“Unless he was up there on guard.”

“How do you mean, Jude?”

“Well, going back to the Horse Ripper theory…”

“Oh, I see what you mean. The Fleets were worried about someone breaking into the stables at night, so Walter would be up there, keeping watch for intruders?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Yes. But it was a quarter past six in the evening when you found his body. He wouldn’t have been in his sleeping bag at that time of night.”

“True. So the more likely scenario is that someone else was upstairs in the tack room…Walter surprised them…an argument and a fight ensued…and he got killed…by this…person…whoever it was.”

“Mm.”

“Hell having no information, isn’t it, Carole?”

“Yes. If only we had one fact…like the time the murder took place.”

“Well, I think it was only moments before I found the body.”

“Why, because the blood was still flowing?”

“I don’t think it was still flowing, but it certainly hadn’t started to congeal. And blood would dry pretty quickly when the weather’s as cold as that. Also, there had been a sudden commotion from the horses. Something had disturbed them only moments before I went into the stables. In fact, it was the noise that made me go into the stables. I thought Sonia must be inside.”

“So maybe the murderer-”

“And I’ve just remembered another thing.” Jude’s brown eyes focused intently as she tried to recapture the scene. “Just as I entered the stables, I heard a clattering, like a gate shutting. I think, if I’d gone in a few seconds earlier, I would actually have seen the murderer.”

When Jude had described Sonia Dalrymple as “quite well heeled,” she had been guilty of understatement. Her client was extremely well heeled. Unwins, where the Dalrymples lived, was what West Sussex estate agents would describe as “an equestrian estate,” off the Fedborough Road roughly a half mile nearer Fethering than Long Bamber Stables were. But Jude didn’t have to go on the main roads for her visit; “the pretty way,” along the tow path of the River Fether, would get her there in a brisk twenty minutes.

Her refusal of Carole’s offer of a lift had been only partly for health reasons. Jude’s deep understanding of the human body left her in no doubt as to the importance of exercise. She ate sensibly and walked whenever she had the opportunity. This regime didn’t seem to have any effect on her bulk, which had been quietly expanding since her early forties, but it made her feel good in herself.

Apart from that, though, Jude didn’t really want Carole with her for this visit. Sonia Dalrymple, for all her confident exterior, was a highly sensitive, even shy woman. And, though Carole would probably have intended just to drop Jude at the gates, there was a danger she might expect to be asked to wait-or decide, out of her natural curiosity, that she wanted to wait. Carole’s presence on the premises would undoubtedly have put Sonia on her guard, and destroyed the confidential mood in which Jude hoped to find her.

The February air was sharp on Jude’s cheeks. The tidal Fether, swollen by recent rains, churned in full spate, ominously close to the tow path. On Jude’s horizon the South Downs undulated away, green mounds giving way to ever mistier grey. A startled pheasant flew up from the grass by her side, creaking like an old football rattle. The landscape’s harsh beauty contributed to a sense within Jude of well-being-and also of excitement.

Sonia Dalrymple’s husband Nicky worked for an international bank. His actual role there was never defined; all Fethering gossip knew was that, whatever he did, he was paid an enormous amount of money for doing it. Unwins, the house that Jude approached, was one of the family’s three residences; there was also a mansion flat overlooking the Thames in London, and a villa in Barbados.

Their Fethering place had been built in the early nineteenth century as a farmhouse. Over the years, as with so many farms in the area, the land had been sold off for development, but some ten acres, now converted to gardens and paddocks, had been retained. The Dalrymples had renovated and designer-decorated the house so completely as to erase any vestiges of its humble agricultural origins. The same transformation had been wrought on the outbuildings. A barn had been converted into luxury guest flats, and the old cowshed into a state-of-the-art stable yard.